Author Topic: What if Ys was made for calculators? (Read 6287 times)

DJ Omnimaga · « **on:** November 30, 2010, 01:23:32 am »

I was bored earlier and decided to attempt at drawing a mockup of what could have been "Ys: Ancient Ys Vanished Omen" (the first game in the Ys RPG series) if it was made for the calculator.

Here are some screenshots from the original scene shown in my attachment (MSX, NES then PCEngine/Turbografx-16):

Fitting everything was a bit hard because I wanted to preserve the borders, unlike in the NES and Sega Master System versions (the later is the ugliest of all). The difference in my screenshot is that the max HP bar (red) would be eliminated and the current HP bar would be percentage-based so at max HP it fills the HP bar, same for enemies. This would be to eliminate the need for grayscale. The HUD is inspired from Ys III for the PC88:

Note: in the Sega Master System, Turbo, PC88, MSX and later remakes of the game, there are stars flying in the background in the scene above. My mockup could be modified to accomodate such background easier (to fit 8x8 stars sprites in) but then the battlefield in the screenshot would get smaller. Alternatively, the sides of the battlefield could be displayed as sprites after the map is updated.

shmibs · « **Reply #1 on:** November 30, 2010, 02:13:05 am »

/\An Rpg in monochrome like this wouldn't be tasking on the processor, so it would be simple enough to mask everything over a moving-star backbuffer to achieve that effect.

i like the way this looks, and am a bit tempted to take a stab at it(though i know that, at least until january, there's no way i'd be able to do something so tasking[not to mention the two large projects i'm already supposedly working on =P])

DJ Omnimaga · « **Reply #2 on:** November 30, 2010, 02:21:26 am »

Yeah I would like to see your stuff finished lol. Didn't you work on that robot game thing a while ago?

Anyway for bosses, in that game the map would not scroll and remain aligned horizontally. Just that would speed things up. The bad part would be implementing collision detection with enemies and stuff. I know in the game you just run through enemies to attack them, but it would still be a bit hectic to do it with smooth movement. I guess if you did it before it wouldn't be as hard, though.

shmibs · « **Reply #3 on:** November 30, 2010, 02:39:11 am »

1).how exactly does gameplay in this rpg work (i've never heard of it before). it looks interesting, combining sidescrolling and overhead into one game.
2).the colour choices in those screenies look kind of wonky (to the point that it's sort of atari-esque

) and would probably actually look BETTER in gray or mono.
3).i haven't given up on either of those projects, just waiting until i have freetime again.

DJ Omnimaga · « **Reply #4 on:** November 30, 2010, 02:58:55 am »

Oh, it's just overhead. The last screenshot is a different game in the series and the only side-scrolling one. The one I made a mockup of is overhead and it's a bit like ARPGCS in terms of battling with enemies. Here's a video:

shmibs · « **Reply #5 on:** November 30, 2010, 03:23:36 am »

hey, cool! i can watch youtub vids again(probably because my father was watching something earlier and forgot to re-enable the filter.)

damn, as far as making rpgs goes, that would be EASY!
it looks like there are a lot of large maps as well as usable items, but that's all just data. the battles look pretty simple, too, as all motions are on a half-tile grid(no smoothscrolling or any crazy collision-detection methods needed) and look like they could be really fun, too!

DJ Omnimaga · « **Reply #6 on:** November 30, 2010, 03:26:49 am »

Well, honestly, I think the maps could be made a bit smaller sometimes, especially that first area. I don't think they need to be that big.

Note that in other versions there's smooth scrolling, it's because the one I linked to ran on a crappy system. But it doesn't need to be blazing fast either.

shmibs · « **Reply #7 on:** November 30, 2010, 03:30:40 am »

well, with the hardware we're dealing with, and reflex based battle system portrayed here, non-smooth motions would work much better as response times would be quicker. i've always found old system reflex-based games with smooth motions(like mortal kombat) incredibly frustrating because of how non-responsive the controls seem.

DJ Omnimaga · « **Reply #8 on:** November 30, 2010, 03:34:28 am »

Yeah true. Also, in Ys, to attack enemies, it detects if you're in front of them or half in front of them. You need to walk from their sides to deal enough damage and not lose HP. Otherwise they barely lose HP and you lose some. Having the game so the character moves every 4 pixel would make things much easier. Who knows? Maybe we could have music in a 15 MHz version, since that's pretty much the best part of the old Ys games

shmibs · « **Reply #9 on:** November 30, 2010, 03:44:23 am »

i have yet to see background music done well, but there's a first time for everything.

anyways, these maps definitely lend themselves well to being compressed, so that's a huge plus, and if the side borders are shrunk down to 4 pixels wide that means an 11*6 area of the map can be drawn at a time, which isn't bad. hopefully somebody will actually pick this up(hint hint to all you eager younglings out there searching for new projects).

DJ Omnimaga · « **Reply #10 on:** November 30, 2010, 04:12:43 am »

At one point I may experiment a bit with music. I need to write a player/editor or something once I found my adapter (again).

I think one tricky part in that kind of project is doing the story/event chronology right. I always get stuck in the game even if I played a version completely. X.x

DJ Omnimaga · « **Reply #11 on:** January 04, 2011, 08:43:18 pm »

I just found a video of the FM-77AV version of the game, somthing I've been searching for a long while.

http://nicosound.anyap.info/nicothumb.aspx?v=sm853983

This version is very similar to the PC-88 version and was also released in 1987, but the final battle music is longer, some of the music sounds a bit different and the ending looks different.

Considering the original two games runs at 8 FPS or so, I guess the calc version could be slowed down to that speed to allow better grayscale quality or even sound, especially that the most awesome part of that game is the music.

EDIT: I also found something about the health bars: On the NES, there's a small vertical line defining the max HP for enemies. If such calc game had to be monochrome, maybe the same thing could be done?

TIfanx1999 · « **Reply #12 on:** January 05, 2011, 07:45:35 am »

Wow, that's really old school. Some if the still artwork is pretty nice though! =)

DJ Omnimaga · « **Reply #13 on:** January 05, 2011, 12:42:08 pm »

Indeed. For these computer systems there were also a bunch of other cool RPGs apparently, but most came only in Japan. I think most were recreated for consoles, though, but were mostly forgotten over time.

I also like how some games tried so hard at having parallax scrolling on the two platforms when it had slower graphic processing than the NES and SMS, yet the NES/SMS counterparts had no parallax scrolling.

Author Topic: What if Ys was made for calculators? (Read 6287 times)

DJ Omnimaga

What if Ys was made for calculators?

shmibs

Re: What if Ys was made for calculators?

DJ Omnimaga

Re: What if Ys was made for calculators?

shmibs

Re: What if Ys was made for calculators?

DJ Omnimaga

Re: What if Ys was made for calculators?

shmibs

Re: What if Ys was made for calculators?

DJ Omnimaga

Re: What if Ys was made for calculators?

shmibs

Re: What if Ys was made for calculators?

DJ Omnimaga

Re: What if Ys was made for calculators?

shmibs

Re: What if Ys was made for calculators?

DJ Omnimaga

Re: What if Ys was made for calculators?

DJ Omnimaga

Re: What if Ys was made for calculators?

TIfanx1999

Re: What if Ys was made for calculators?

DJ Omnimaga

Re: What if Ys was made for calculators?